Tuesday, April 23, 2013

A British businessman who sold bogus bomb detectors to countries at war where hundreds of people were dying and injured by explosive devices was found guilty of fraud at the Old Bailey today.

James McCormick made massive sums of money selling novelty ‘golfball finders’ worth just $20 for up to $40,000 each. His maximum profits were from the vicious war in Iraq which became a byword for terrible suffering. The 57-year-old former policeman sold the devices to the government in Baghdad over a period of years for a total of $75 million.

McCormick had claimed that the ‘detectors’ could trace “everything from explosives to elephants” including narcotics, different types of fluids, gemstones, ivory and hidden people. They were able to operate, he maintained, through walls, underwater and underground.

Australian Federal Police have arrested the self-proclaimed leader of the international hacking group LulzSec, the collective that claimed responsibility for infiltrating and shutting down the CIA website.

Police said the 24-year-old IT worker, who held a position of trust at an international company, was arrested in Sydney on Tuesday evening and charged with hacking offences that carry a maximum penalty of 10 years.

Glen McEwen, manager of cyber crime operations at Australian Federal Police, said the man was detained at work, where he had access to sensitive information from clients including government agencies.

The owner of a fertilizer plant that exploded last week killing 14 people and destroying dozens of homes and an apartment complex in a tiny Texas town is being sued by a single mom and by several insurance companies.

Two lawsuits, filed in McLennan County district court, have accused Adair Grain, Inc, the parent company of West Fertilizer Co, of negligence, according to copies of the filings provided by the court on Tuesday.

The company "was negligent in the operation of its facility, creating an unreasonably dangerous condition, which led to the fire and explosion," said a lawsuit filed on Friday by insurance companies on behalf of individuals, two churches, and businesses including a Chevrolet car dealer and a bakery.

While President Barack Obama has declared a "red line" over Syrian use of chemical weapons, U.S. officials suggested on Tuesday that Washington was unlikely to respond without clear-cut evidence of such use - evidence that may be very hard to come by.

Israel's top military intelligence analyst said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that Syrian government forces had used chemical weapons - probably the nerve gas sarin - in their fight against rebels trying to force out President Bashar al-Assad.

He cited photographic evidence of victims foaming at the mouth, their pupils contracted.

The U.S. government filed court documents Tuesday laying out its case against cyclist Lance Armstrong, who is accused of defrauding the Postal Service by taking millions of dollars in sponsorship money while flouting professional cycling rules by doping.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in February it would join a whistleblower lawsuit brought in 2010 by Armstrong's former teammate, Floyd Landis, and on Tuesday filed its formal complaint.

The computer network on the U.S. Navy's newest class of coastal warships showed vulnerabilities in Navy cybersecurity tests, but the issues were not severe enough to prevent an eight-month deployment to Singapore, a Navy official said on Tuesday.

A Navy team of computer hacking experts found some deficiencies when assigned to try to penetrate the network of the USS Freedom, the lead vessel in the $37 billion Littoral Combat Ship program, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. lawmakers grilled top security officials on Tuesday about the handling of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation and why one of the suspects flagged as a possible Islamist radical was not tracked more closely.

FBI officials briefed members of Congress behind closed doors in Washington about the investigation into the April 15 blasts that killed three people and injured 264 others.

Authorities say the ethnic Chechen brothers, who immigrated to the United States a decade ago from the predominantly Muslim region of Dagestan in Russia's Caucasus, detonated two bombs made from pressure cookers near the finish line of the iconic foot race.

An alleged al Qaeda-backed plot to derail a U.S. passenger train in Canada sought to exploit the vulnerabilities of railroads that have not gotten much attention from the American public.

While the United States has sharply tightened security around airlines since the September 11, 2001, attacks, trains are far harder to police, with masses of passengers getting on and off and stops at many stations on a single line. Thousands of miles (km) of track, bridges and tunnels present a major challenge to monitor.

At least 185 persons including women and children were reported to have been killed by either gunshots or fire after suspected Boko Haram gunmen engaged soldiers of the Joint Task Force in a deadly shootout that left the commercial border town of Baga in Borno State completely burnt down.

Local government officials, who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES, said 185 persons died, at least 2000 houses, 64 motorcycles and 40 cars were burnt in the wake of the attack.

The Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, visited the town on Sunday and was told by residents that soldiers were responsible for the torching of houses that led to the death of many.

Uncertainty threatened high-level bilateral visits as Indian troops stayed locked eyeball-to-eyeball with 22 intruding Chinese soldiers in Ladakh on Tuesday and a flag meeting between the two sides flopped.

Senior officials on both sides swung into action to try and rescue visits by defence minister AK Antony to Beijing and Chinese premier Li Keqiang to India next month but sources warned that their job was getting tougher as the Chinese intrusion looked set to enter its ninth day.

Troops from the two sides are separated by just 300 metres in the cold desert battleground 17,000 feet above sea level.

Possible radioactive traces from a North Korean nuclear test in February have been detected for the first time, although it remains unclear what fissile material Pyongyang used, a monitoring organization said Tuesday.

“The ratio of the detected xenon isotopes (xenon-131m and xenon-133) is consistent with a nuclear fission event occurring more than 50 days before the detection,” the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said. “This coincides very well” with the North Korea’s announced nuclear test on Feb. 12.

The detection at a monitoring station in Japan came 55 days after the explosion.

The group said, however, that the discovery couldn’t help it answer the key question of whether Pyongyang used plutonium or uranium in the blast.

Con artists are targeting the elderly in a frightening way in Brooklyn.

As CBS 2’s John Slattery reported Tuesday, they ask for cash, and if they don’t get it, they terrorize their victims by threatening an evil curse.

As Chinese immigrants expand their growth in the city, con artists are targeting their older population, like those in Sheepshead Bay. Slattery spoke to one woman who knows one of the victims, and explained that the motive is said to be simple.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

Mr. Bloomberg, who has come under fire for the N.Y.P.D.’s monitoring of Muslim communities and other aggressive tactics, said the rest of the country needs to learn from the attacks.

Ron Paul's vibrant fan base is in open rebellion today over Rand Paul's reversal on domestic drone strikes. The Kentucky senator, whose famous 13-hour Senate floor filibuster did much to strengthen his ties with his father's hardcore following, told Fox Business Network on Tuesday he's OK with drone strikes on American citizens who, for instance, rob a liquor store.

"I've never argued against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an active crime going on," Paul said. "If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash. I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him."

While it's true that Paul has always made an exception for "imminent threats" -- a 9/11-like moment -- the liquor store scenario struck many libertarians as a very low threshold for domestic drone strikes, especially considering Paul's Senate floor remarks, which if you recall, took a more anti-drone stance.

China's new leaders are grappling with their first natural disaster — the earthquake that struck Lushan county, a remote mountainous area of Sichuan province, early Saturday morning, killing about 200 people and injuring many thousands.

In office for only five weeks, the new leadership seems determined to do a better job than the last one, and for good reason.

The relationship between the country's rulers and the natural world looms large in traditional Chinese thought. Dynasties have risen and fallen on their handling of things like irrigation and flood control, and natural disasters have been interpreted almost as nature's commentary on the quality of governance.

It was no surprise then that, within hours of Saturday's quake, Premier Li Keqiang arrived at the epicentre by helicopter to begin sympathizing with victims and supervising the rescue effort.

Li's predecessor, Wen Jiabao, was criticized for arriving late at some disasters, and often ridiculed as "China's best actor" for the theatrical tears he would shed when he did arrive.

Note from Alex Jones: Even though we have seen countless instances of lone gunmen on the street, we have never seen an entire city locked down as we witnessed last week in Boston and its suburbs. The very definition of martial law is when due process is suspended and Americans are under military rule.

Infowars.com has reviewed hundreds of photos, many sent to us by our listeners, of militarized police pointing guns at them and treating citizens like terrorist criminals.

Below are samples of these images. We also saw a clip on CNN during the prison lock down in Boston showing a woman in a park playing with her children and a police helicopter told her to get out of the park.

The Mississippi man charged with sending poisoned letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a state judge was released from jail on Tuesday, federal official said, though the reason for the release wasn't immediately clear.

Jeff Woodfin, chief deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Oxford, Miss., said Paul Kevin Curtis has been released from custody. Woodfin said he doesn't know if there were any conditions on the release.

The development comes hours after officials canceled a detention and preliminary hearing without explaining the reason for the change.

A total of 264 people injured in last week's bomb attack at the Boston Marathon were treated at 26 hospitals in the days following the attack, the Boston Public Health Commission said on Tuesday. Three people died in the attack.

Authorities have revised the number of injured several times over the past week as additional cases proved to be linked to the explosions on April 15. The latest count is higher than earlier estimates and reflects patients who may not have sought medical help at the scene but later checked in to hospitals in the area, said Nick Martin, a spokesman for the commission.

North Korea insisted on Tuesday that it be recognized as a nuclear weapons state, a demand the United States promptly dismissed as "neither realistic nor acceptable".

After weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula, including North Korean threats of nuclear war, the North has in recent days begun to at least talk about dialogue in response to calls for talks from both the United States and South Korea.

The North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper rejected as unacceptable the U.S. and South Korean condition that it agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons and suspend missile launches before talks can begin.

Tensions have flared up again between Tokyo and Beijing after Chinese ships and a flotilla of Japanese activists both arrived in the waters near a group of disputed islands.

The two countries have been at odds over the small rocky islands in the East China Sea after Japan purchased some in September, drawing anger from Beijing and anti-Japanese demonstrations across China.

No clashes were reported between the flotilla of 10 boats carrying about 80 nationalist activists, escorted by Japan’s Coast Guard vessels, and the Chinese ships.

A sharp drop in German business activity overshadowed an easing downturn in France in April, surveys showed on Tuesday, raising concerns over a further economic contraction in the euro zone.

Markit's flash euro zone services PMI, an early gauge of business activity each month, rose to 46.6 in April from 46.4 in March, below the 50 line that divides growth from contraction but matching the forecast of economists.

Survey compiler Markit cautioned against taking the rise as a clear sign the region's recession has bottomed out, pointing to a surprise decline in German companies that form the backbone of the euro zone economy.

A tiny robot has made a momentous archaeological discovery deep under the famous Temple of Quetzalcoatl, near the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, it was announced on Monday.

Experts expected to find just one ancient chamber at the end of a stretch of 2,000-year-old unexplored tunnel at the Teotihuacan site. Instead, the remote-controlled vehicle has beamed back images of three mysterious caverns.

The three-foot-long investigator, named Tlaloc II-TC after the Aztec god of rain, was first lowered into the depths of the pyramid to check it was safe for human entry.

A mysterious, circular structure, with a diameter greater than the length of a Boeing 747 jet, has been discovered submerged about 30 feet (9 meters) underneath the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

Scientists first made the discovery by accident in 2003 using sonar to survey the bottom of the lake but published their findings only recently.

"We just bumped into it," recalls Shmuel Marco, a geophysicist from Tel Aviv University who worked on the project. "Usually the bottom of the lake is quite smooth. We were surprised to find a large mound. Initially we didn't realize the importance of this but we consulted with a couple of geologists, and they said it looked like an unusually large Bronze Age statue."

The structure is comprised of basalt rocks, arranged in the shape of a cone. It measures 230 feet (70 meters) at the base of the structure, is 32 feet (10 meters) tall, and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons. It is twice the size of the ancient stone circle at Stonehenge in England.

Chinese authorities have detained at least a half-dozen activists this month, human rights groups said, in what appears to be a crackdown targeting a campaign to publicize the financial assets of top government officials.

Human rights groups named six supporters of the New Citizens Movement who they said had been rounded up by security forces in several waves starting on April 1. Among them were Ding Jiaxi, a human rights lawyer, and Zhao Changqing, a former student leader from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

All six activists are being charged with unlawful assembly, said Liang Xiaojun, a human rights lawyer.

Taliban insurgents seized an Afghan pilot and nine foreign nationals from a transport helicopter after it was forced to make an emergency landing late Sunday night in eastern Afghanistan, authorities said.

The private helicopter, that was used to carry food and other items for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was headed to Kabul from a NATO base in Khost province when it was forced to land in Azra district in neighboring Logar province, said the district's governor, Hamidullah Hamid.

On board were seven Turkish engineers and three pilots: an Afghan and two Russians. Because it's not always safe to travel by road in areas with heavy militant activity, engineers and others will often hitch rides in helicopters delivering supplies.

Japan said Tuesday that eight Chinese government ships had entered waters around a group of islands in the East China Sea that lie at the heart of a territorial dispute between the two countries.

The Japanese Coast Guard said the number of Chinese ships around the uninhabited islands -- known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese -- was the largest since tensions increased over the dispute last year.

For Thailand's Queen Sirikit, the 2007 attack on a minibus in southern Thailand's Yala province -- in which suspected Muslim militants shot eight Buddhists through the head in broad daylight -- was simply further proof of what she'd been saying for more than three years.

"We have to help people there to survive. If they need to be trained, train them. If they need to be armed, arm them," she was quoted as saying by one of her military staff, according to media reports.

Meanwhile, Thailand was convulsed by demonstrations condemning the attack.

Her response was to boost her support for the Or Ror Bor or Village Protection Force, the militia the Royal Aide-de-Camp department, under Queen Sirikit's direction, established in 2004.

Four months after a vicious gang rape left a 23-year-old physiotherapy student dead and triggered a national outcry over the treatment of women, more protests ignited in New Delhi after another brutal rape -- this time the victim was a five-year-old girl.

Two men have been arrested in the case. Authorities say the girl was abducted, locked in a house and raped repeatedly. She was found semiconscious three days later and doctors removed foreign objects from her genitals, including candle pieces and a small bottle.

"In a capital city, we cannot provide protection to a young girl," said Bhagyashri Dengle, the executive director of Plan India, an organization that works to help underprivileged children.

The girl's family said that police officers had tried to bribe them to keep quiet about the case.

Armed rebels in Syria have kidnapped two of the country's most prominent bishops, according to reports by state media. The two men had previously warned of the threat to religious tolerance and diversity arising from the two-year conflict in the country.

The Syriac Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, were seized by “a terrorist group” in the village of Kfar Dael in the northern province of Aleppo as they were “carrying out humanitarian work”, said the government-owned SANA news agency.

A Syriac member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Abdulahad Steifo, said the men had been kidnapped on the road to Aleppo from the rebel-held Bab al Hawa crossing with Turkey.

Russian police posted a reward of at least 3 million rubles ($95,000) on Tuesday for information leading to the arrest of the man suspected of shooting dead six people in Belgorod in southwest Russia on Monday afternoon.

The suspected assailant, named by police as 32-year-old Sergei Pomazun, opened fire from a hunting shop at random victims with a rifle before moving on to the streets of Belgorod. He later fled in the same vehicle in which he had arrived at the scene.

Police and the city administration said a 14-year-old girl was among the dead, five of whom died at the scene of the attack. A sixth victim died shortly after in hospital.

The tide of war may be receding, as President Barack Obama is fond of saying, but U.S. military demand for unmanned drones and their remote pilots is growing.

Here in the New Mexico desert, the U.S. Air Force has ramped up training of drone operators - even as the nation increasingly debates their use and U.S. forces prepare to leave Afghanistan.

"Every combatant commander in the world is asking for these things. Down in Southcom, Africom, Pacom, they're all asking for these assets, so it is in very high demand," said Lt. Col. Mike Weaver, 16th Training Squadron commander at Holloman Air Force Base, referring to the military's Southern, Africa and Pacific commands.

North Korea demanded on Tuesday that it be recognized as a nuclear weapons state, rejecting a U.S. condition that it agree to give up its nuclear arms program before talks can begin.

After weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula, including North Korean threats of nuclear war, the North has in recent days begun to at least talk about dialogue in response to calls for talks from both the United States and South Korea.

The North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper rejected as groundless and unacceptable the U.S. and South Korean condition that it agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons and suspend missile launches.

France's embassy in Libya was hit by what appeared to be a car bomb on Tuesday, injuring two guards in the first such attack in the capital Tripoli since the end of the 2011 war that ousted Muammar Gaddafi.

Residents living near the embassy compound, in the capital's Hay Andalus area, said they heard two blasts early in the morning around 0700 a.m. (0500 GMT).

Top security officials face a grilling from lawmakers on Tuesday over whether authorities who have charged one man with the Boston Marathon bombings may have overlooked warning signs two years ago flagging the other suspect.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was formally charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death at a bedside hearing on Monday in his hospital room, where he was recovering from gunshot wounds suffered in shootouts with police.

French president Francois Hollande has become the most unpopular president in five decades, a new poll has revealed.

Mr Hollande's personal approval rating has plunged to just 25 per cent of the population amid soaring unemployment and ballooning public debt
.
He is even more unpopular that President Charles de Gaulle was in 1968 - when millions of French rioted to demand a complete overhaul of French society.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT: The video was largely filmed by police in the town of Meiktila, Burma during intense bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslim last month. The clip shows a man - almost certainly a Muslim - rolling around on the ground in dazed agony having been set alight by an angry mob.

A group of parents calling themselves 'Letzgo Hunting', have been posing as underage girls to confront potential paedophiles around Leicester, but police have warned them on taking the law into their own hands. Six alleged would-be sex attackers have been arrested from across the Midlands as a result of their tactics.

Police in Nicaragua announced the arrest of Eric Justin Toth, an American on the FBI's most wanted list, who is sought on child pornography charges.

Toth, a former schoolteacher and camp counselor was taken into custody in the northern city of Esteli on Saturday, police said. He had been living under an assumed identity the city 148 kilometers (92 miles) north of Managua since October, said national police chief Aminta Granera.

The suspect was transferred to Managua where he was presented to the press ahead of his swift extradition from this Central American nation.

Granera said Toth resisted arrest, though she did not detail how, before he was subdued and then transferred to Managua.

David Cameron is heading for a new coalition row over Europe, after his plan to pull Britain out of 130 EU justice and police co-operation measures was denounced by senior peers as dangerous to national security.

A report by the cross-party Lords EU committee echoes concerns by police and security chiefs by warning that opting out of the laws would have “significant adverse negative repercussions” for British security and justice.

France and Spain fell short of their budget deficit goals last year and debt levels swelled across the euro zone but the pressure may be easing on Paris and Madrid as the European Commission signals an end to sharp spending cuts.

Outlining the state of Europe's accounts in 2012, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said on Monday that France posted a deficit of 4.8 percent of economic output, higher than its 4.5 percent target. Spain's shortfall was the largest in the EU.

With budget cuts blamed for a second straight year of recession, the EU's top economics official Olli Rehn indicated over the weekend that more flexibility on tough economic targets was needed. His boss, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said on Monday that austerity had reached its natural limits of popular support.

A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty on Monday to murder for shooting dead five fellow servicemen at a military counseling center in Iraq, a plea made in a deal with military prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.

U.S. Army Sergeant John Russell was accused of killing two medical staff officers and three soldiers at Camp Liberty, adjacent to the Baghdad airport, in a 2009 shooting the military said at the time could have been triggered by combat stress.

Russell pleaded guilty to five counts of intentional murder, one count of attempted murder, and one count of assault. The hearing was held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

A man in the northeastern Chinese province of Shandong has been infected by a new strain of bird flu, the first case found in the province, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday, bringing the total number of victims in China to 105.

The H7N9 virus has killed 20 people in China. Although it is not clear how people are becoming infected, the World Health Organization (WHO) says there is no evidence of the most worrying scenario - sustained transmission between people.

A 36-year-old man from the city of Zaozhuang in Shandong was being treated in hospital, while two more people were infected in eastern Zhejiang province, Xinhua said.

MEXICO - There were 11 new outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) of the H7N3 subtype during the last month.

The veterinary authority has sent Follow Up Report No.5 dated 17 April to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

The report outlines 11 new outbreaks of H7N3 HPAI starting between 4 March and 4 April. A total of 664,126 poultry were involved, among which there were 8,505 cases and 502 birds died.

Of the new outbreaks, six were in in Jalisco, four in Guanajuato and one in Tlaxcala. Six outbreaks were on commercial layer farms (four in Jalisco and two in Guanajuato), three on heavy breeder farms (one in Jalisco and two in Guanajuato), one in broilers (Jalisco) and one in backyard poultry (Tlaxcala). An epidemiological investigation is on-going in this last outbreak.